DIY Home Improvement Forum banner

Help identifying unknown outlet

8K views 30 replies 20 participants last post by  zappa 
#1 ·
While doing renovation at my 30 year house I opened blank plate on the wall and discovered this strange outlet inside. It is not wired and there is no wires inside. Shape is very strange so I have no idea what is the purpose of this outlet. I did not find anything similar in internet.
You may notice it is located very low comparing to normal electrical outlets.
Any idea what is it and what it serves?
 

Attachments

See less See more
1
#10 ·
That is a low voltage device. Could have been used for a phone....but I'm more inclined to think it was for a device that was intended to stay plugged in all the time. Unusual to do that with phones...might have been for a fax machine....

Was the house owned by an old person before? It might have been one of those life monitors.
 
#21 ·
I have to agree.....looking at the color of the plastic.....

I'm still thinking that it was maybe hardwired to a medical monitor....

Most of the older style lines I have seen used the square box just screwed to your base moulding....

And I agree...it was installed after the fact....

I suspect it was a old recpt that got installed a few years later (how many guys have rummaged thru their stuff, found an old 'something' and said "Hey, I can use this")

To the OP...pull the box and look behind it....see if there is any old phone wire....

It's obvious that this is killing us to know...
 
#2 ·
Well that certainly is an interesting looking whatever-it-is. Can't say I've ever seen one before. I suspect it might be a cable pass-through, meant to allow some kind of low-voltage cable (cable TV, speaker wire, intercom?) to come out of the wall. Can you remove it and take a few more pictures of it from the other sides?
 
#3 ·
I'm with mcsteve on this. I'm pretty sure in older times they they didn't have wall connections for TV cable. I believe it was just ran into the room. With that outlet you have, it allows the cable to pass through without chaffing it. But this is just a wild guess lol

My dad and grandpa however just ran theirs directly to the TV in the room. If you wanted the cable out of the way you feed it back into the basement lol.
 
#5 ·
If there are no places to 'wire' anything to it on the inside, I'd guess it's for the old analog TV antenna wire. The 2 wire, flat plastic TV antenna wire with the spade connections would slip in and out of that easily enough, hence the 'oval' shape?

DM
 
#7 ·
#8 ·
I'm not quite so sure it is for phone....

Can you take pics of the back of it? If it has light gauge wire to it..then it is phone..but it does not look deep enough for a TRS (Tip Ring Sleeve) plug to go into it...additionaly, the TRS female socket will have a ground right at the neck surface....if that was a phone plug, I would expect to see wear marks in the hole.

Look at the odd shape of the hole....not a true circle.

Look at the screws holding the box....square head....not exactly 1950's construction....that looks to be pretty recent.
 
#9 ·
I took it out.
Made pictures by phone so sorry for poor quality.
It has 6 contacts on the back which are not through to the hole. The hole inside is only plastic without any contacts. It seems like a pass for wires into the wall were they are connected with other wires probably.
There is also central contact. This contact can be accessed by some long metal connector.
 

Attachments

#18 ·
The house is about 35 years old. This device (and box) were installed after the house was built as:
1. Box is screwed at front, not like other electrical boxes in house nailed from sides.
2. It is too close to the floor (not by code).

Also it was closed by flat plate. I amd painting hall and was just wondering what the plate is this. It is totally useless so I will remove the box and patch the wall.
 
#20 ·
Are any of the punch-outs in the box missing even?

6 screw terminals is pretty consistent with the old, pre CAT-3 phone cable though.

From the length of the screws holding that plastic bit on, it would seem it was meant to be adjustable, so perhaps there was before some sort of faceplate to it.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top